Posted on 11/03/2003 12:05:39 PM PST by Heartlander
That may be true for you and for psychopaths like Bill Clinton, but it isn't universally true. The majority of people have empathy.
Man has witnessed many meteor strikes. We know what the craters look like. We know what kind of debris is left. Why should we doubt the cause of the Arizona crater?
The majority of people have a selfish gene and the ability to rationalize the suffering of others if that suffering should be for their own gain.
And that is evil and I can call it that because I know God is real and he calls this evil.
I suggest you go looking for the beam in your own eye, bb. Let me quote you from 277, addressed to myself and general_re.
I gather you both regard ID as an “interloper” and a challenge to your own metaphysical doctrines, and that is the reason you refuse to even consider it.
and
Since you absolutely reject the existence of God, you are therefore spared the inconvenience of entertaining the arguments in support of the theory of a designed universe. You have come to this conclusion via a very circuitous and – might I suggest – unscientific route.
The accusation that I reject the existence of God is, BTW, downright false.
Moving along; you haven't said why inferring the attributes of the designed is extra-scientific, in a way that inferring the attributes of an anonymous painter would not be. Calliong it ontology isn't an answer. A scientific analysis of the painter of an anonymous work isn't ontology.
You raised the issue of theodicy -- why an infinitely good and powerful God would permit evil in the world -- which you allege Christian theology "papers over." Actually, Christianity delves into this issue with great psychological and ontological sensitivity and penetration. But at the end of the day, what can finally be said about the problem of evil in the world is that it is the mysterium iniquitatis -- the "mystery of iniquity," a mystery right up there with why God created the universe in the first place. The question is unanswerable for us humans, because there is no specific, hard evidence occurring in the space-time world in which we live that sheds such light on the problem that we can say with any kind of certainty that God's motives can be elucidated
Thanks to 12 years of Catholic education, I'm well familiar with the relevant doctrine. It's an unfathomable mystery; since Christian philosophy managed to create some sort of rational edifice over most of the rest of Christian doctrine, I don't think it's going too far to say they papered over the problem of evil. For all the rather Gnostic and existential arguments about how evil is necessary to allow good, one is stuck with a fundamental contradiction. After all, if evil brings forth good, then the Holocaust must have been the greatest producer of good in human history. But that's nonsense. If we really believed that sickness were necessary to allow the virtue of stoicism, as a society we'd promote sickness. We don't. We strive to eliminate evil. No rational person does evil to increase the opportunity for good. To suggest that God permits evil to exist for that purpose requires that God be irrational.
So, while Chrisitianity can perfectly well claim that God moves in a mysterious way, at the same time to be beyond explanation is to be beyond logic, because logic requires cause and effect. Thus my point that positing an ineffable designer puts ID beyond logic as well as beyond naturalism.
Anyhoot, Satan wants to be our "role model" -- to do as he did, and say to God, "non serviam" -- "I will not serve You."
Conflating skepticism about Christian dogma with the incarnation of evil is one of the uglier aspects of Christian doctrine. No doubt we could be living in a universe where some of us will be eternally tortured for asking for a little hard evidence. Me, I'd prefer to think we are somewhere better than pre-liberation Iraq.
No witnesses. Can't be reproduced in the lab. Therefore it's not science. It's pure naturalist speculation. Therefore biased. Deliberate elimination of any supernatural cause.
This kind of thing will cause the end of civilization. If people start believing that rocks fall from the sky, why shouldn't we all run around raping and killing each other? Hitler believed rocks fall from the sky. Where will it all end?
The observation that DNA can be re-coded via natural processes to do the things required by evolution (one-celled to multi-celled etc.)
The discovery of an animal (A) that can fertilize the seed of animals (B) and (C) while animal B cannot fertilize the seed of C.
You lost me on this one Patrick.
In other words, you want evidence that you can't have - "observing" such a thing in nature would take millions of years of watching, and neither of us is going to be around that long. And if I sling together enough mutations to do the same thing in a timely fashion in the lab, you'll simply say that this is no evidence of "natural processes" when a person does it, right?
The discovery of an animal (A) that can fertilize the seed of animals (B) and (C) while animal B cannot fertilize the seed of C.
Pick any three animals of the same species you like, and that condition is satisfied. I'll let you think about that one for a moment, and if you still don't understand, I'll explain why that condition is almost always true ;)
Inferring the attributes of a painter -- or a painting -- is not a scientific problem. The latter is a problem for aesthetics, art appreciation, etc. Is not science!
But I am not positing an ineffable designer -- at least not as a scientific problem. You are.
No, you missed the point I was making. Cruelty exists without dispute, and regardless of religion it is evil, and we all have an inherent understanding that it is.
I'm saying that if we were here by accident -- and not made in God's image -- we would not have this understanding.
Regardless of what one believes, evil exists. And God exists.
LOL, but that's not what I meant.:-)
That apparently is also true of inferring design, since no one can point to any contex-free process for inferring design. There are endless instances of bogus inferred design. The constellations, the weather, earthquakes -- all have been the subject of desingn inferences. Virtually every significant natural phenomenon has been attributed to the intenionality of some imaginary entity.
Note the word "significant". I used it to mean important. But it embeds the word "signify", which suggests intention.
I would argue that most of twentieth century art was a conscious attempt to explore the boundary between the accidental and purposeful -- a kind of esthetic Turing test, aimed at defining the very thing you seem to think is so obvious.
But it shouldn't take a million years. it should take a nano-second. Here you have this single-celled creature, now it's a multi-celled one.
And if I sling together enough mutations to do the same thing in a timely fashion in the lab, you'll simply say that this is no evidence of "natural processes" when a person does it, right?
Actually, no. Has this been done?
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